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MIDDLEBURY — The students in Rodney Olsen’s class in the Diversified Occupations Program at the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center in Middlebury readily and happily dissect owl dung.

Olsen’s charges are citizen scientists, after all, learning from Olsen, one of two winners of this year’s Green Mountain Environmental Leadership Awards in the citizen scientist category.

The students have made valuable contributions to the public through expanding scientific knowledge of raptors, owls and other birds in and around Addison County. But maybe their best discovery was how much their experience learning about birds gave them insight into their own humanity.

One of the many highlights of Olsen’s class is when the students go out into Dead Creek or up on Snake Mountain and capture birds of prey, sometimes even eagles. They put bands on the birds for research, briefly examine them and let them fly away, all the while taking down data for the Federal Bird Banding Lab.

As Olsen notes, “this is real research.”

The thrill of getting up close and personal with a raptor is an unforgettable experience, said Nick Bassett, 18, a junior at the career center. The center is an alternative education program, and many of Olsen’s students participate in the diversified occupations program at Hannaford.

Before taking the class, Bassett said he never really considered birds or their majesty. He heard about Olsen’s class, decided it sounded like fun and took it on a whim.

Then he caught a raptor for research.

“It was a blast,” Bassett recalled. “It was a big adrenaline rush. It was awesome. I never knew you could catch birds.”

He found the knowledge he gained about birds fascinating: how they use thermals to soar, how they find food, how they migrate. He found himself feeling protective of the birds. Bassett became an environmentalist.

Bassett said he knows pollution can harm the birds he studies. There’s auto emissions. Pesticides. Insecticides. “Plastics and stuff like that are big culprits,” he said. “Right now we’re dumping trash into the oceans.” The refuse or its effects moves up the food chain. Into the birds of prey. Maybe some of the raptors Bassett has met.

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Bassett said he wants to study and learn more, to help raptors and other wildlife. He figures it’s a matter of paying it forward. And since he’s paying it forward for wildlife, it makes sense to remember to pay it forward for humans, too, he said.

Olsen said most of the students in his class are like Bassett. The experience is fun. “I use this as a tool for education,” he said. “But it doesn’t take much. You expose a kid to nature, and you never know where it’s going to lead.”

Where it seems to most often lead is respect. “I was born a nature boy,” said Matthew Karznarczyk, 19, of Charlotte, a student in Olsen’s class. But Olsen’s influence made him more of an environmentalist, he said.

“It’s not always about us. We share the planet with other species,” Karznarczyk said.

You have to respect animals, he said. And if their habitat goes, it’s a loss for everyone. He cited polar bears, whose habitats are melting away as ice in the Arctic disappears under the onslaught of global warming. “When they’re all gone, your children won’t even know what they are,” he said.

Olsen said he enjoys the way students such as Karznarczyk discover, on their own, through their research and learning, the larger issues of environmentalism and humanity’s place in the natural world. “Matt has a good handle on it,” Olsen said. “He’s gotten it.”

Olsen said he’s grateful to the school’s leaders for giving him the flexibility to involve the students in raptor science in the environment where the birds live. “I have a huge appreciation for this administration to allow us to leave the safety of the classroom,” he said.

The risk of things not going as planned, the fact that raptors don’t follow a scheduled curriculum makes teaching the class all the more satisfying, Olsen said. “You can’t write a lesson plan,” he added, with joy.

Students in Olsen’s class sometimes go to elementary schools and show younger kids their work. Karznarczyk said the trips to the schools are another example of learning to pay it forward.